Getting around the "is a reserved username on this system" error when creating cPanel accounts.

Symptoms

The following error is returned when creating a cPanel account:

Unable to create account. (XID vpycqw)test is a reserved username on this system. at /usr/local/cpanel/Whostmgr/Accounts/Create.pm line 623.

Description

This occurs when selecting a username that is reserved by the system. The cPanel & WHM software reserves some usernames for the system’s use. These usernames cannot be used for cPanel accounts.

Workaround

To get around this, you will simply need to change your cPanel account username to one that is not reserved. To obtain the most up to date list of reserved usernames on the system, you can run the following in SSH as root:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/perl -MCpanel::Validate::Username::Core -e 'use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(Cpanel::Validate::Username::Core::list_reserved_usernames())'|cut -d'=' -f2

When selecting a username, please also keep the following in mind:

• Usernames may only use lower letters (a–z) and digits (0–9).Usernames cannot contain more than 16 characters.
• Usernames cannot begin with a digit (0–9) or the string test.
• Usernames cannot end with the string password.

Additional Resources

Reserved, Invalid, and Misconfigured Usernames